264 Evolution of Morals. 



example of the permanent family relation.* The preserva- 

 tion of the family became recognized as essential to the 

 life and happiness of the individual. The family became a 

 larger self, and toward the preservation of this self instead 

 of the individual self, the efforts of each member of the 

 family were directed.! This change involved still greater 

 complexity in the adjustment of acts to ends — more active 

 intelligence, greater fulness and length of life : — in a word, 

 a higher evolution of conduct. It was probably during this 

 earliest stage of social evolution that language was evolved, 

 giving a great impulse both to intellectual development, and 

 to that tendency to social combination out of which has 

 grown the moral sense. " Any being," says Darwin, " if it 

 vary, however slightly, in a manner profitable to itself, will 

 have a better chance of surviving, and thus be naturally 

 selected." Such a variation, evidently, was this change in 

 conduct, as a higher order of intelligence and greater facil- 

 ities for social communication were evolved. The vital 

 activities, no longer exhausted in the struggle to live and 

 the effort to perpetuate the race, turned naturally into 

 other channels. As a larger average number of individuals 

 reached maturity, reproductive activities were diminished 

 and the struggle for existence was ameliorated. X The law 

 of competitive contest which, superficially regarded, seemed 

 to threaten either universal selfishness or universal destruc- 

 tion, was found to contain the proper antidote for these 

 evils in the natural result of its own operation. The co- 

 operative family, it is evident, would be better able to cope 

 with unfavorable conditions in the struggle for existence 

 than the lone anthropoid progenitor of man had ever been. § 

 The growth of the family-self into the tribal-self, of the 

 tribe into the city and State, doubtless proceeded along the 

 lines which we have already indicated in describing the 

 evolution of the family ; resulting in a gradual enlargement 

 of the area of altruistic service, a constant diminution of 

 warfare and struggle, a higher order of individual and social 

 life. Our study of the evolution of society has proved to 



* It is not assumed that the monogamic family constituted the earliest form 

 of the domestic relation. Doubtless polygamous and polyandrous relations 

 succeeded the primitive herdal (gregarious) habits of man's progenitors, pre- 

 ceding the monogamic family in the order of evolution. The theory of moral 

 evolution herewith set forth requires only a permanent family relationship, 

 however constituted. 



t Wake's Evolution of Morality. 



+ Spencer's Essay on the Law of Population. 



§Lone, though gregarious, because his motives were fundamentally egoistic. 



